Beacon
by Gumnut
Summary: The light at the end of the tunnel.


Beacon  
By Gumnut   
18 Jun 2004  
  
Track.  
  
Left.  
  
Right.  
  
Left.  
  
Reflections. A soft red glow in the pitch black darkness.  
  
Salvation.  
  
It called to him.  
  
Literally.  
  
"Michael."  
  
The whisper was harsh and daring.  
  
"Michael, can you hear me?"  
  
Urgent and repetitive.  
  
"Michael!"  
  
"K..Kitt." His mouth struggled to form the word, his tongue thick and stumbling over his teeth, and he could barely hear himself.  
  
But the red light heard him.  
  
"Michael, please be quiet, your assailants are nearby."  
  
Assailants?  
  
He moved his head just slightly, and was rewarded with a shooting pain that ran the length of his spine and exploded somewhere behind his eyes in a white flash that lit up the dark.  
  
"Michael!"  
  
Wha? "Kitt?" The red light in the distance doubled, tripled, and continued to track back and forth mockingly.  
  
Where the hell was he? And what the hell was going on?  
  
He was lying on his stomach, on something rough. Wood? He twitched the fingers of his left hand and they caught on sharp splinters. Wood.  
  
Something was digging into his leg.  
  
Voices.  
  
He held his breath.  
  
Muffled, mumbled, he couldn't hear what they were saying, but they weren't too far away. His assailants?  
  
Too many questions, not enough answers.  
  
His voice was cracked and rough, but whispered. "Kitt, what the hell is going on?"  
  
-------------------  
  
Kitt had the moment etched permanently into his memory.  
  
The dark night, shattered by a blinding explosion that shook him to the core. Michael!  
  
He could do nothing but watch as the body of his driver was lifted from where it had been standing in the middle of the old bridge and flung back towards his waiting car, only to land in a broken heap several metres from Kitt's front fender.  
  
Kitt resisted the urge to back up as broken timbers were blown in his direction, clattering across his windshield, hot dust clogging his scanner track. Heat washed over him, and he almost panicked at the thought of what this could be doing to his unprotected partner.  
  
His scanners poked through the smoke clogged air as the dust began to settle, silence falling as the darkness returned, spot fires dwindling, the only sounds the soft burbling of the creek beneath the remains of the bridge that had once spanned it, and the pop and crack of dying flame and heated wood. His vital signs monitor faithfully spouted numbers back at him, the brief relief at the sign of life quickly followed by a sinking feeling of dread as Michael's true status was read out to him.  
  
If an AI could have a deity, he would have cried out its name in vain.  
  
But as it was, there was only one person Kitt worshipped, so he called out to him instead.  
  
"Michael!"  
  
He didn't expect a response, and he didn't get one.  
  
A signal had already been sent to the authorities and they were on their way. But they were miles out from anywhere, on an old abandoned back road. Help would take time to get here. Too much time.  
  
And there was still the problem of the instigators of the situation.  
  
At first he didn't notice them. Just as he hadn't noticed the launch of the projectile that had caused the explosion in the first place. Several circuits were fully devoted to admonishing himself, but he could not afford the time to consider that factor any further at this point. Other things were far more important.  
  
They had a vehicle of indiscernible make, and they appeared beyond the hill on the other side of the decimated bridge. Several men climbed out of the car. One was toting a grenade launcher.  
  
And, to Kitt's horror, he raised it up to his shoulder and aimed at the bridge again.  
  
Kitt flung out a signal in desperation, reaching for anything he could do to disrupt the man's intentions. Unfortunately there was nothing in the grenade launcher to electronically disrupt, the entire thing was mechanical. He needed a distraction. Anything.  
  
Sound.  
  
Accessing his vocal synthesizer, he pulled a file containing gunfire and threw it across the gorge.  
  
The reaction was immediate, the men fell to the ground, scurrying for cover, and a part of Kitt smiled in grim amusement.  
  
Assigning their entertainment to a secondary system, he returned his focus to his driver, and, signalling the comlink, called out his name again and again. The vital signs monitor continued to spout numbers, most bad, but there was hope. A little.  
  
If only he could get Michael off the bridge.  
  
--------------------  
  
The soft timbre of Kitt's voice was calming, it lulled him, and he desperately wanted to give into the oblivion that was taunting him, but each time he felt himself falling, that same voice caught him, sharply calling his name, urging him back to wakefulness.  
  
And that red light beckoned.  
  
Something was severely wrong with his back. Each time he attempted to move, white hot fire would dance the length of his spine, and the object that had previously been digging into his leg, now seemed to have penetrated it.  
  
In short, movement was agony.  
  
And something he had no real wish to engage in at the present time.  
  
But Kitt had other ideas.  
  
His partner seemed to be accessing every verbal tactic he could possibly think of to get Michael moving, cajoling, encouragement, and downright frantic demands being at the top of his list. At some point the urgency in his friend's voice caught on in his fogged out mind, and Michael realised that there might be a reason as to why Kitt wanted him to move.  
  
Assailants. He had said something about assailants.  
  
He had been on a bridge.  
  
A meeting. To arrange a sale. He'd been undercover. Arms dealer.  
  
But the bad guys hadn't turned up. He had been waiting for hours.  
  
Apparently they had only been late.  
  
The distant murmur of voices was still there. Occasionally a barked order, silence, the clink of metal on metal. Suddenly a yell, and the night lit up with the orange of an explosion. Michael briefly saw the flicker of flame reflected in the black outline of the suddenly visible Trans Am. What the?  
  
"Michael, please!"  
  
The air echoed with gunfire and Michael flinched, instinctively attempting to duck even though he was already on the ground.  
  
"Michael, hurry!"  
  
The red scanner tracked back and forth.  
  
He focussed.  
  
He pushed himself on to his elbows.  
  
The dark beckoned, his mind spinning.  
  
But the red light tracked.  
  
The light at the end of the tunnel.  
  
-----------------  
  
It was painful to watch, and Kitt received it in full multi-dimensional colour. He knew the moment Michael's cracked rib finally gave way and snapped. He could measure the vibrations of the jagged piece of wooden shrapnel, tapping against his driver's thighbone as he dragged his leg over the splintered planks of the damaged bridge. He monitored every ragged breath as Michael attempted to draw air into his labouring lungs.  
  
Fortunately the structure hadn't collapsed completely, but it was still unstable. Kitt eyed the shivering support pylons. Michael only had a few metres to crawl before he reached Kitt's position and solid ground, but in his state it was equal to miles.  
  
The men on the other side of the gorge were still confused as to the source of the gunfire. Kitt tactically bounced the sounds from specified directions to give the impression of shooter locations, and so far the man with the RPG launcher had managed to point it everywhere but back at Michael. One 'shooter's position had already been blasted by a grenade, and Kitt had altered the sounds accordingly.  
  
But he knew it was only a matter of time. An indication of his opponent's mental acuity was the fact that they hadn't yet noticed that none of the bullets actually struck the ground. That was one special effect he was incapable of creating.  
  
Two metres to his front fender, another two to his driver's side door.  
  
Breathing.  
  
Heart rate.  
  
Blood loss. A trail of it wove out behind him.  
  
Suddenly there was a yell. One of the men pointed across the gorge in Kitt's direction. Oh, no.  
  
They couldn't see him, could they?  
  
He knew he was as black as the night around him. There was little or no light out here, the sky dark with clouds. Even the headlights of the car they had driven in could not reach the width of the gorge.  
  
But they had seen something.  
  
His scanner.  
  
A flick of a circuit and the guilty instrument shut down.  
  
------------------  
  
The red light vanished.  
  
For a moment Michael simply froze. Then the elbow that had been holding him stable for the moment collapsed beneath him, and his face met with splinters as he landed hard.  
  
He had been so close!  
  
With the guiding light gone, there was nothing. Kitt's voice continued to whisper in his ear, but he could hardly hear it above the pounding in his head. The ball of pain where his body used to be hammered at his mind.  
  
Had Kitt left him?  
  
The thought was so alien, even his addled mind balked at it.  
  
Kitt would never leave him.  
  
So where was he?  
  
He stared up into the dark, and in his mind's eye, he sketched the outline of the Trans Am that held his friend.  
  
He was there.  
  
He didn't have to see him to know that Kitt was there.  
  
His elbows ached with abuse, but it was a small problem when compared to the rest of his current existence, and he forced them under him, pushing his body into motion.  
  
Kitt was there for him.  
  
He always was.  
  
-------------------  
  
If Kitt had a heart, it would currently be situated somewhere on his front bumper.  
  
He had been spotted.  
  
He hadn't been fast enough. They knew he was out here.  
  
Of course, they had known of the existence of the car, but not of its capabilities and the entity that resided within. They probably still didn't, but they knew someone was messing with their heads, and the car was the obvious and most likely source.  
  
The grenade launcher was now securely aimed at his windscreen.  
  
Michael had hesitated as the scanner light winked out, his body slumping as if defeated, but a determined expression had soon washed over his face, and he was now only inches away from Kitt's fender. They only needed a few more moments and his driver would be safe inside.  
  
They weren't to be granted those moments.  
  
The men had completely given up on trying to hide from the 'gunfire', and Kitt could see the grimy face of the one with the weapon staring out into the dark at him, anger and determination clearly etched into his features.  
  
Kitt spun possible alternative distractions through his mind, but he had serious doubts, plus poor probability of success calculations, to hold him back, and after several microseconds of concentrated thought, he discarded all of them.  
  
He needed something more solid.  
  
One solution did occur to him, though it held a seventy-eight percent probability of human injury - something he was programmed to avoid.  
  
The finger on the grenade launcher twitched, and Kitt mentally jumped.  
  
It was simple really. Them or Michael.  
  
The laser came online and targeted the car on the other side of the river. The dark was sliced in two by brilliant green energy, and for a moment the gorge was bridged once again, this time by polarised light.  
  
The beam made contact with the vehicle's petrol tank, and the fuel exploded, flinging metal, glass, and human bodies all across the clearing.  
  
The grenade launcher went with them.  
  
"Kitt?"  
  
Michael spoke for the first time in a long time, and Kitt finally felt the soft skin of his driver's hand brushing against his front bumper.  
  
"Michael." Not for the first time, Kitt wished he had a hand with which he could reach out to touch his driver. "You're nearly there."   
  
-----------------  
  
Michael reached up through the open car door and touched the plush material of his driver seat. One more obstacle and he could rest. The thought bounced around in his brain like a mantra. One more. One more.  
  
His vision was all but useless in the darkness, Kitt having doused the cabin lighting, and the few outlines he could see reflecting the fire in the distance were blurred double.  
  
He had to get into the car.  
  
Get in the car, Michael.  
  
"Michael! Hurry!"  
  
Kitt's engine roared into life, the car trembling.  
  
Michael's legs refused to co-operate, his fingernails dug into the seat material, and his ribs screamed, but he mercilessly forced his body off the ground. His back had turned into liquid fire, and as one arm clawed and hung onto the centre console, he felt something tear.  
  
"Aack, god!"  
  
"Michael, we are being targeted."  
  
He used his other arm to reach down and pull his legs inside the door once he had dragged his torso in far enough. He did not have the energy or the ability to sit up in his seat, and when Kitt was finally able to close the door, he ended up sprawled across the centre console.  
  
He was briefly aware of movement, Kitt calling his name, and then the world lit up in a blaze of light and thunder.  
  
And everything spiralled to a stop.  
  
-----------------  
  
They missed.  
  
It had been close, but ultimately they missed.  
  
Kitt spun his back wheels, throwing up dust, and whipping himself around. The grenade launcher was aiming again.  
  
With the gentleness of a mother dropping a blanket over a sleeping child, Kitt activated the Passive Laser Restraint System, the beams wrapping around his unconscious driver. He had already disengaged the functions assigned to the console Michael was draped over, and he tightened the restraint field securely, ensuring Michael moved as little as possible whilst not restricting his troubled breathing.  
  
Engaging Super Pursuit Mode, Kitt floored it.  
  
---------------------  
  
He remembered a voice. A familiar voice that spoke to him all the time. It whispered, it smiled, it encouraged, occasionally it even yelled at him, but it was always there. And he found comfort in it.  
  
---------------------  
  
Waking up in a hospital bed had become so familiar to Michael Knight over the past few years, that it no longer surprised him. In fact he had come to know a few of the nurses in this particular hospital quite well. Several of their numbers were already in his personal phone book - filed away electronically by Kitt, of course.  
  
This time was no different. Waking with a name on his lips to a parade of doctors, nurses, and friends, none of which belonged to that particular name.  
  
He'd done it properly this time. Third degree burns to his back, a great big fat hole in his left leg where the bridge had impaled him, complete with chipped femur, several broken ribs, and the complimentary concussion that always seemed to accompany any trip to the emergency room.  
  
Soon his days settled into a routine of treatments - he needed some skin grafts and cosmetic surgery on his back - rehab, and general convalescing activities.  
  
His nights were spent dreaming of red light.  
  
Tracking back and forth.  
  
Urging him on.  
  
Usually the first place a patient visits once they get mobile is either the garden or the cafeteria.  
  
Michael chose the parking lot.  
  
He didn't have to look, he knew where he would find him.  
  
It was early morning, and though hospitals never sleep, this was as about as quiet as it got. Most of the high-rise public car park was empty, and as Michael wheeled himself out onto the top level, it was quiet enough to hear the treads of the chair on the concrete.  
  
He hadn't told Kitt he was coming. He wanted to visit the AI, not the other way around, and Kitt would have admonished him if asked. The top floor of the parking lot was open to the cool morning air, and the breeze tousled his hair as he made his way across to the far corner.  
  
Kitt was where Michael knew he would be, gazing out across the city.  
  
"Clocking up my next pay cheque in parking fees, buddy?"  
  
The Trans Am's engine thrummed into life and Kitt backed up, turning to 'face' his partner. The familiar scanner beat back and forth.  
  
"It is good to see you, Michael."  
  
Michael didn't respond. His eyes had been caught by the red light.  
  
It tracked.  
  
Left.  
  
Right.  
  
Left.  
  
"Michael?" The Trans Am edged closer.  
  
He couldn't help it, he stared. Kitt moved closer still, and as if mesmerised, Michael raised his hand and traced the line of the scanner, his fingers brushing across the grill, following the alluring light.  
  
"Michael?"  
  
"Kitt, I want to thank you."  
  
"Michael-"  
  
"No, Kitt, I want to say this. I want you to know that you've seen me through some pretty desperate times, and each time you've been there for me." He swallowed. "You're a beacon, Kitt, my light at the end of the tunnel." There was silence for a moment, broken only by a bird choosing that instant to fly past declaring the sun had risen. "I appreciate you more than you can know."  
  
"I know enough." Kitt paused before quietly adding, "I know you."  
  
Michael smiled, just a little. "Thanks, buddy, for everything."  
  
"You are always welcome."   
  
He patted the hood gently before turning away, and wheeling himself over to the edge of the roof, gazing over the barrier at the houses below. "So, tell me, have the Joneses had their new pool built yet?"  
  
Kitt rolled over to join him. "Unfortunately, no, unless you count a muddy hole in the middle of their backyard, a pool."  
  
Michael grinned, and the wind tousled his hair.  
  
It felt good to be alive.  
  
------------------  
  
FIN.


End file.
